How do maintenance scheduling and automatic reminders work?
Kai tracks maintenance intervals and sends automatic reminders to keep your assets in compliance.
Maintenance types
- One-time — a single planned service with no recurrence
- Time-based — calendar intervals (e.g. annual inspection every 12 months)
- Meter-based — usage intervals (e.g. oil change every 50 hours)
Pick the interval type that matches the manufacturer's recommendation. You can create multiple maintenance items per asset, each with its own type.
How it works
- Set up maintenance items — when you add an asset, Kai prefills common items based on the asset type
- Record maintenance — log each time a service is performed (date, cost, vendor, parts, receipt)
- Automatic tracking — for meter-based items, the next due reading is recalculated from your usage logs as they're entered
- Reminders — notifications go out before the due date or due reading
Reminder settings
- Advance notice — how many days/hours before due (e.g. 30 days)
- Who is alerted: owners and admins see maintenance alerts in the app; members can opt in to maintenance reminder emails in their own notification settings
- Recurrence — one-time or until the maintenance is logged
Status
- Upcoming — within the reminder window
- Due — past the due date but not yet performed
- Overdue — significantly past due
- Completed — performed and logged
Grounding the asset while it is in the shop
Recording maintenance does not, on its own, stop anyone booking the asset. To take it off the calendar, open the item while its status is Scheduled or In Progress and tick Ground the asset for this item.
- Optionally set Grounded from and Grounded until for the period it is out of service. Leave both empty and it stays grounded until the item is closed.
- New bookings overlapping that period are refused, and the calendar shows a banner with the asset, the dates and the reason.
- Everyone who can book the asset is notified, in the app and by push.
- Completing or deleting the item returns the asset to service automatically. If two items ground the same asset it stays grounded until both are closed, and the group is only told it is back in service once nothing is holding it.
Two things this is not:
- Ground if overdue on a meter interval only raises an alert when the interval passes due. It never grounds the asset by itself — an admin still decides.
- Grounding stops new bookings only. Bookings already in the calendar for that period are not cancelled; the calendar flags them so an admin can contact those members.
An admin can also ground an asset directly from the asset itself, without a maintenance item.
Best practices
- Set realistic reminder windows (30–60 days for an annual)
- Log maintenance immediately after completion
- Include all relevant details — cost, vendor, parts, work order
- Upload receipts and inspection forms
- Examples for aircraft: oil change every 50 hours, annual inspection every 12 months, engine overhaul by total hours. Create each as its own recurring item
Choosing the meter and the starting point
On assets with more than one hour meter (an aircraft with Hobbs and flying time, for example), each meter-based interval picks which meter it counts, independent of the meter your group bills usage on.
Every meter interval also chooses where its counter starts under Count from: a raw meter reading, a usage log ("the last flight before the shop visit"), or a date. Anchored to a log or date, only usage recorded after that moment counts against the interval, with no meter arithmetic needed.
If your group has a maintenance shop email on file (Group settings, Maintenance), individual items can email the shop automatically as they approach, come due, or go overdue.